S01E01 - Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire
The main thing that strikes me here is how gentle and low-key the humour is, stuff like "Who's Tiny Tim?" and "Dad, we're so happy to see you!"/"What? Why?!" plus some pretty basic observational stuff (cables always get knotted together, school recitals are boring). Plus also some more naturalistic behaviour that we might not see in later seasons, like Lisa sitting on Grandpa's knee watching a show, or Bart calm and smiling because he's enjoying spending time with his dad. The animation is a bit ropey in places, but they still find space for some flourishes like the low angle on Homer snapping "No!" at the kids as he leaves the house, or the eyes and teeth in the dark.
S01E02 - Bart The Genius
Surprised they go with a couch gag (and a fairly elaborate one that involves the reverse shot on the telly!) for the first episode, rather than just the vanilla version. Perhaps explains (along with my youth) why it took me a long time to recognise the central satirical joke of the opening titles: there's this long extravagant Elfman-scored epic journey as all of them rush to get home to each other only to immediately and wordlessly cram onto the sofa in front of the tv.
Anyway, this is a fun episode but you can tell it's an early one because it's wholly Bart-focused and there aren't many moving parts to it. I like how they're already undercutting conventions, with all the smart kids being insufferably pretentious bullies and Bart's heartfelt confession utterly failing to touch Homer and devolving into a messy nude chase through the house.
Re. characters going off-model, there is some of that here, but I wouldn't include many of the examples posted here - they're just expressive animation, the kind of stretch and squash that you don't see in the stiff digital animation of later Simpsons (along with such lovely visual flourishes as we see in Bart's visualisation sequence).
S01E03 - Homer's Odyssey
This one just feels rushed, it doesn't have a handle on structure or tone. But also, no visual verve - it's directed like an early Kevin Smith film.
Really enjoyed Sherri and Terri as sly, malevolent kids. Presumably The Shining was an influence here, beating League Of Gentlemen by a few years. Shame they fade away a bit, would have been fun to see them go a bit more Chloe and Radclyffe.
S01E04 - No Disgrace Like Home
A very fun episode and feels like a proof of concept for the show - no high concept storyline like Homer's Odyssey, just 'this is a regular sitcom except the family are realistically terrible, the writers are all Gen Xers so a typical happy ending is getting a slightly better television, and it's a cartoon so we can do slapstick, violence and fantasy sequences'.
It's been so long since I saw this episode, I got a big hit of nostalgia from "why don't you BOTH SHUT UP". One of my favourite lines from back when we only had like ten episodes of The Simpsons to watch over and over.
There are still some characterisations that aren't fully honed yet - Lisa is still a lot more childlike and mischievous, Marge is a lot more into vegging out in front of the tv than eating at the table, and I feel like a family picnic on his grounds is something even season 2 Burns wouldn't consider (plus his sack race performance is surprisingly vigorous!).
S01E05 - Bart the General
Lots of good stuff in this one. All the advice from Homer, the up-and-down sibling relationship (I love the animation acting of Lisa on the bus), loads of great animation as mentioned above (bin rolling POV, another expressionist dream from Bart with so many great transitions and effects). Honestly, I think it falls apart a little in the second half - the training montage is too long and more preoccupied with movie homages than jokes, and then the battle plan and defeat of Nelson is underwhelming (it just took a bunch of kids to throw water balloons at him?) as is the resolution. Peak Simpsons would have crammed a few more beats in here, come up with some smarter stuff.
I never liked that Special Message from Bart, it feels like a last minute enforced addition. The animation is noticeably worse and the jokes about gory pictures and whatnot feel like band-aids for the preachy tone.
Is this the first in-show appearance of Milhouse? I thought that he appeared in the Butterfinger adverts before the show, but if that's the case then they must have got that promotional deal off the ground very quickly!
S01E05 - Moaning Lisa
This episode is full of elements I enjoy - Lisa going through a patch of depression, Marge reckoning with her upbringing and how it affects her parenting, Lisa and Bleeding Gums, Homer and Bart's competition - but it doesn't really develop or intertwine any of them, or work out a strong arc for them. The happy ending in the car is so lovely, but how we get there is pretty ramshackle - Marge has a nightmare about her mother's bad life lessons, then decides to impart them on Lisa anyway, then after ten seconds changes her mind. And Lisa meets Bleeding Gums and it seems like the encounter is going to be helpful then just... isn't and that's pretty much the end of that.
I'd be interested to see what the season 3 writers' room would have done with this basic prompt for an episode.
S01E06 - Call Of The Simpsons
Fun watching these on a big telly and noticing little details in the title sequence for the first time, like Semi-Painless Dentistry, and the Duff advert on the side of the bus (has the "can't get enough" slogan been used in-show yet?).
Finally a vanilla couch shot, I was beginning to think I'd imagined it!
Easy to forget that in Open Fire and this episode, Flanders is a bit of a prick, flaunting his wealth (or good credit rating at least) in front of Homer.
I love Bob the car salesman, he's got a great Christian Slater drawl and loads of funny lines. As I think has been mentioned, the show stepped away from one-off characters like this a bit to keep using the same extended cast, which is cool in its own way but also lost a little something.
Homer driving through the river like a Cybertruck owner.
Once they get to the woods, this gets very cartoony, it feels like a Chuck Jones cartoon or a Goofy short. Not that I mind, it's fun to mix it up with episodes like Lisa Gets Depression, but it's not my favourite Simpsons mode. I'm surprised Groening let them get away with the bear stuff considering how strict he was about not anthropomorphising Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II.
The bigfoot storyline is fun, though it feels like it's at this odd midway point between being a throwaway gag and a main plot point. I think it might have worked best as one element of a farce/screwball, which again is something I expect a later, more structure-focused writers' room might have done. I always liked the way that a Simpsons episode would start off with an inciting incident that had little to do with what the story wound up being, it felt like you were getting two or three episodes in one, but the show got better at that as it went and the early episodes have a loosey-goosey feel to them which isn't bad but I think is a big part of what gets them discounted from the Golden Age in a lot of people's minds.
S01E07 - The Telltale Head
This is one of the episodes that keeps season 1 in "Golden Age Simpsons" for me. The structure is great, there's loads of low-key sharply written dialogue and moments, the balance of tone between heightened and human moments is great, as is that of sincere and cynical, and so many classic Simpsons elements getting introduced. The animation is mostly rock solid as well, save for a few cheap-looking moments.
The use of the word "boners" is smart because it sticks out (fnarr) and so when the narrative catches up with itself, hearing the word again allows the viewer to immediately orient themselves chronologically.
S01E08 - Life On The Fast Lane
I really like this one, again a good mix of low-key smart writing with heightened cartoon moments, without going too far with either. Brooks is great, as mentioned, but I also really like the inventive portrayal of Homer being a shitty husband (I've used 'got them a bowling ball with Homer engraved in it' as a metaphor for this kind of behaviour many a time), and Bart and Lisa's characters and relationship being so well drawn (they argue but also support, Bart is not a dope but is often slower than Lisa to catch on). I love Lisa's resigned 'I can't help you as I am deep in stage 5."
It resolves a little easily, but I think that works quite well - this is a small story of a moment where Marge almost made a mistake but because Homer finally showed an ounce of appreciation she pulled herself back.
S01E10 - Homer's Night Out
A very sweet one. Not a laugh riot but just a really well told story. The montage of the photo spreading from Bart through town all the way to the point where Homer is whistling the Egyptian dance tune as he walks into the confrontation with Marge is brilliantly done.
Still lots of funny moments, though - I particularly like the glimpse we get at Homer's career standing still while people like Ernie Fisk pass him by. Homer's kinda unsympathetic and cynical at the top of this episode, actually - assuming that Ernie was making an ass of himself making a sleazy pass at some random girl, whereas we can infer by the end of the stag party that it was probably a very sweet moment where he met the love of his life.
Some very sweet moments too, like all three kids hugging Homer, and Lisa calling him "Daddy", plus the ending of course. [note - it has been pointed out to me that the ending is actually pretty retrograde with its 'respect women because they're your mothers and wives rather than because they're humans' message]
Weird to hear Lenny and Carl sounding so different!
Cool to see the Rusty Barnacle after it was mentioned last episode (along with Le Pierre's, I think?) as an alternative to The Singing Sirloin. Excellent restaurant names in this show.
S01E11 - The Crepes of Wrath
So, this one I was never a big fan of, even as a kid. The laughs take a backseat to all the story they have to get through, and even that feels a bit rushed. Plus, the Bart in France stuff is genuinely depressing for most of it, and all the art looks a bit ugly. There's not much flair to the art and animation through the entire episode, actually. A few nice shots when Homer goes down the stairs, the shot of Skinner through the keyhole. Otherwise, this episode feels like a bit of a rush job.
The increase in plot density definitely feels like a move towards the Golden Age, I just think they'd get better at not backgrounding the comedy for it. That's not to say there was no comedy in there, or that none of it worked - most of the Homer/Adil stuff works great.
Also, a typically (across all seasons) bad episode title - you can't do a pun on Grapes Of Wrath where you change "grapes" for something else when your episode is actually about grapes!
S01E12 - Krusty Gets Busted
Still fantastic! A genuinely good comedy mystery plot with clues hidden in jokes, a well paced plot, dense with gags (small stuff like cutting back to Sideshow Bob after Bart's revelation, going on about Stoicism), some sharp satire about manipulative children's media and performative cancellation (people buying Krusty merch just to burn it reminded me of all those anti-woke idiots buying toothbrushes just to break them on camera or whatever, thus funding the company they claim to despise). Loads of great animation as well - Krusty and Bob's facial animations in particular are wonderfully elastic, and there are some nice visual flourishes like the low angle on Wiggum and the SWAT guy, the blue lighting in Bart's room as Krusty's poster looms over him, or Bart's revelation opening with a camera dolly around him and after some lovely editing ending up with neon feet tumbling through the shot.
S01E13 - Some Enchanted Evening
Yeah, this one is okay, it's just very loosey-goosey. Like, there's nothing to the Marge/Homer plot, and we've already had a couple of 'Homer takes Marge for granted' episodes that did it better (and yeah, I know, production order, but the comparison stands). And the babysitter bandit story is all set-up until the two beats of 'they realise who she is and she ties them up/Maggie frees them and they tie her up' and that's basically it over. Using the suddenly-very-capable Maggie as a deus ex machina is a bit uninspired as well. The neat twist of Homer freeing her, helping her to her car with all their stolen stuff and then paying her triple is funny, but then it's the old 'cut to Homer watching embarrassing news report about himself in bed, sweet moment with Marge' transition which functions as the end of the episode despite not contributing anything to the story.
But there are funny moments, the Happy Little Elves stuff is great, and it goes surprisingly hard with Bart trying to drop a bowling ball ("HOMER"!) on the bandit's head and then cracking her round the head with a baseball bat. It's nice to see Homer good at something (the mambo!) and Lisa not only enjoying the shitty Elves show but also getting wrapped up in the 'glamour' of her parents going out on a date. There's some fun rubbery face animation on Moe and the bandit, too, and some low-key impressive guest actors.
Favourite line: "Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers Babysitting Service."
S02E01 - Bart Gets an F
You can feel the quality bump straight away with the new title sequence - it's all a little sharper, the music and sound are beefier. Plus they're setting out their 'extended cast' stall here with two pans across a bunch of known characters, plus replacing the power plant sandwich guy with Burns and Smithers. (This led me to hope back in 1990 that they'd keep on changing little details like that as the show went on, I was always a little disappointed that didn't happen.) A shame to lose the Lisa on bike moment, but at least we lose the magically disappearing bike goof.
The animation isn't strides ahead of S1 but it's always as good as S1 at its best, and it's consistent. There are still some odd shots, but I think that's mostly intentional perspective and 'lens' choices, like when Homer overdoes his enthusiastic response to Lisa's A and suddenly his head is wildly embiggened because he's leant into camera. A return of the monochrome/pastels dream sequence as well, and a really nice sweeping montage of the most exciting snow day ever.
The pacing and level of detail is up as well. They linger in scenes a lot less, get stuff moving straight away. And they're always taking the chance to stick in a little extra gag or reference, like Wendell covering his mouth as he exits the bus or the kids making an ice sculpture of Jeremiah Springfield and a bear., Jacques and Kashmir showing up in the background.
Probably my only quibble with the episode is it feels a little safe, a little toothless. It's full of great gags and even some sweet emotional moments, but at the end of the day it's an episode about Bart trying to do well at a test. The "I passed, I passed, I... kissed the teacher!" feels like a very Boy Meets World or Family Ties type moment, and it's pretty much the end of the episode.
S02E02 - Simpson And Delilah
For some weird reason, Homer's yell as he gets chased into the garage in the titles is different this week.
All in all a great episode. Nice and pacey again with a solid structure, an amazing turn from Fierstein, and some real emotional heft to it (I'm annoyed at Bart, frustrated at the short-sighted executives, angry at Smithers, sympathetic towards Burns for a brief moment, touched by Marge, and of course in love with Karl - I think this is the first episode so far that I've found so dramatically effective). Stand-out moments are the Wonderful Life style run through Springfield and the visit to the executive washroom (with a lovely match dissolve at the end).
S02E03 - Treehouse Of Horror
Nice to see the start of a tradition, but this one is pretty weak. It feels like a carry over from S1, very loose and sloppy.
The bookending segment is fairly anonymous, though the joke of Homer getting scared while the kids are unphased is pretty fun.
The first tale is very tame parody, basically just 'hey, remember Poltergeist and Amityville?' I don't really like the 'not even a demon house could bear to live with the Simpsons' ending either, it's a bit too self-aware, feels smug.
The second tale is the strongest of the lot. It has an odd beginning with the flies and the barbeque (I guess they're supposed to be thematic?) but once they get on the ship it's good fun, the alien designs and voices are enjoyably over the top, and all the weird lighting and set design works really nicely. It goes beyond its inspiration, too, with the increasing silliness of the space dust on the book. The ending dialogue is all nice and snappy too. Really the only issue with it is that it doesn't really work as a horror story, but I know ToH episodes never stick too rigidly to that.
The final tale feels like edutainment that they were forced to put in and tried to make up for with some cynical dialogue from Bart and Lisa. It reminded me of the disclaimer at the end of Bart The General, trying to sweeten the medicine of obligatory inclusions with a few jokes. It also reminded me a bit of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (or any other desperate modernisation of an older text, I guess) - if we get these modern archetypes to yell the original dialogue, kids will love it!
Outside of the second tale, the best thing about this episode is the spooky cover of the end theme.
S02E04 - Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish
Funny to see some real narrative shortcuts taken to keep the pacing up, like the contrivance of the investigative journo showing up at that precise moment, and it being the Simpson kids who happen to discover Blinky. Then a couple of spinning newspapers and we're on our way. I'm fine with that, though, no need for a bunch of shoe leather in the name of realism.
Along with the uptick in pacing that we've all noted, I think the dedication to making every line funny is really notable here. Every line of dialogue in the initial inspection, for example, is pure gold. The actors also seem to be doing the same with their delivery. Every emphasis, every grunt or murmur, enhances the comedy and is seared into my brain.
And again, a bit more dedication to continuity and detail, with the glimpse of a newspaper clipping referring back to the Telltale Head, and the inspector's clipboard retaining its hole in the next scene, Maggie doing business in the background of a dialogue scene with her dummy. It all goes to make the world feel deeper and more cohesive, which helps the comedy. It's like that moment in a sitcom's run where even if the writing isn't getting sharper, it gains strength in familiarity of the characters - simply recognising something as exactly what you'd expect X to say or do, or the opposite of what you'd expect them to say or do, is amusing and enjoyable.
Having said all that, season 2 sticks in my mind as still having time for quiet character moments that aren't His Girl Friday whipcrack dialogue. Like Homer walking down a quiet corridor, saying "Echo!" and chuckling. That feels like the kind of beat that later seasons wouldn't make time for.
Lots of lovely direction here, especially the light and shadow in the late-night power plant corridors and parking lot, and shots like the hood ornament coming at camera or the extreme close up of the toast crashing into Homer's maw. The music is great too, a lot of John Williamsy moments with the Burns march montage or the tension of Burns trying to eat Blinky.
I think the political satire really adds something as well, the writers seem to often put out their best work when they're doing something like this. I love Burns' huge team of advisors, the Greek chorus of voters and journos, moments like Lisa leaving the table a few seconds into Burns' reply to her inane question and no one caring. Compare it to the rushed feel of the media fanfare around Homer as Bigfoot in season 1, it feels a lot more thoughtful.
All in all, an excellent episode.
(I guess one tiny quibble I could make is that the end isn't super-punchy? Maybe even just keeping that Marge and Homer dialogue in the previous scene and ending on the front door closing would have given it a bit more snap?)
Last thing, I went through the rewatch ritual of googling for the full background of the new whip pan shot in the opening titles.
S02E05 - Dancin' Homer
This feels a lot more like a S1 episode to me, very loose, not much going on with the story, very gentle humour. It takes ten minutes to get the story going where another S2 ep might take two. They try to beef it up a bit with the flashback structure but it doesn't really add anything.
It's a pleasant enough watch, and I can enjoy the baseball culture stuff even though as a non-US non-fan it's more of a 'I assume that is well observed' reaction than an 'that is so true!' one. The Capitol City bit is nice, but again it feels like a very S1 shallow take on a concept, I would have preferred they got there in minute 5 and spent more time on it. It's no The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson, that's for sure.
It all looks nice enough, lots of crowd detail, Homer's dances are good, and I love the Goofball design - up there with Dinghy Dog from Curse Of Monkey Island and Lester The Possum from A Goofy Movie in the ranks of cartoon mascot costumes. Though it felt a little rushed in places, like the lip sync in the opening Moe's Bar scene.
Is Tony Bennett the first 'as themselves' guest star? Also maybe the first joke about Simpsons merchandising (I think there was a reference to the underachiever t-shirt, a little more subtle and I may be getting the show vs merch timeline muddled there)? So even with the slower storytelling it still has some post-S1 vibes.
Overall, perfectly cromulent episode, but not as good as my fond memories suggested.
S02E06 - Dead Putting Society
Terrible episode name. One of the earliest examples of their shit pun titles, probably one of the only two dreadful ones so far along with Crepes Of Wrath.
But the episode itself is solid. It's more of a classic sitcom story done with the Simpsons verve than anything wildly ambitious, but it's nice to have those in here. I like the character comedy, the low-key humour, the snappy pace (I wouldn't go so far as to call it breakneck, but it never drags). Homer's self-defeating actions, Flanders as the supposedly pious by constantly smug and 'unintentionally' bragging, and the interplay between the two are the strong points here for me. (The performances help here, of course, and it's great that the show is at a point where the actors' performances and chemistry can turn basic 'building block' lines of dialogue into comedy gems - Seinfeld is becoming a regular comparison point for me at this stage, which is a huge compliment, and again I'm reminded of that show by this growing strength of The Simpsons.) I also enjoy Lisa doing her best to actually help Bart, and angrily shooing her dad away the whole time - I actually get a bit frustrated on Bart's behalf in this episode and that's a sign it's doing something right. I also enjoy the 'Lisa + Bart solve a problem together' dynamic (also seen in Krusty Gets Busted) and it made me think that I'd like to see a spin-off (or Treehouse ep or whatever) with them aged up and now a criminal duo where Bart is the wildcard anarchic brawn and Lisa is the brains.
Probably my third fave of the season so far behind the Karl and Blinky episodes.
S02E07 - Bart Vs Thanksgiving
This is a really low-key one, and I like that. It's nice to have some variety, and honestly I could have watched an entire 'slice of life' episode in the same vein as the first nine minutes. It's almost a shame that they felt the need to insert a slightly more cartoonish and standard sitcom drama note to it with Bart running away. But that's all kept pretty low-key as well and mostly revolves around the psychology of Bart rather than any contrived peril. There are still lots of fun little details like the El Barto graffiti, the classical references to wealth in the street names (plenty of "pompous blow-dried college boys" on the writing staff, clearly!) and Burns' security being so high class they're reading Les Mis. It gets a little aimless, but it all comes together with Bart's return. The dream sequence looks great and successfully lends a bit of sympathy to a character who can be pretty infuriating sometimes, and the up-and-down sibling relationship is believable and sweet. It's interesting that a show which is still heavily centred around Bart and making a lot of merchandising off him is still unafraid to show him being a total prick sometimes.
Speaking of which, Do The Bartman was released two days before this episode!
S02E08 - Bart the Daredevil
Great episode. It's not densely packed, but it's pacey, and they still pack lots of jokes in even when it's supposed to be a slower scene - i.e. the recital, which is dragging for Homer and so needs some time spent on it but gives us lots of comedy from him, Skinner, the cannons and bell, grabbing Lisa and then immediately into the fun of Homer speeding down the highway. They really have a handle on how to structure the comedy, what to show and not to show, etc.
This episode also has a great handle on the tone - it's cartoonish with stuff like the lion in the pool or Homer jumping for joy on the skateboard, but it also has Bart knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital for stitches after a small fall, and Homer torn to bloody shreds by the gorge wall. It's avoiding the missteps of Call Of The Simpsons.
And lots of smart low-key moments still, like the knowing jokes about tv's bad influence (which will get delved into deeper soon), Hibbert's suspicious "hmmmm" at Bart's cheesy 'very special episode' acting, Lance puckering his lips a second time for more lascivious reasons.
I love that ending, it's punchy and funny and ramps the pacing up at the last moment rather than diffusing it, it's what I think some episodes like the Blinky one that resorted to a 'sweet Homer and Marge bedtime scene' were missing. It got a final big laugh out of me and ended the whole thing on a high.
S02E09 - Itchy and Scratchy and Marge
One thing I love about this episode is the sheer volume of Itchy & Scratchy we get to enjoy. The clips are always genuinely enjoyable as Chuck Jones-esque comedy. It works well in an episode that isn't otherwise very cartoonish in a physical sense, only in sarcastically exaggerated moments like the Psycho homage or the return to a golden age of kids at play to the point where they revert to mid-19th century activities like the Tom Sawyer-esque fence painting.
Speaking of that sarcasm, one possible criticism to be aimed at the episode is that it's one-sided and heavy-handed with its messaging. But better to have a viewpoint than to 'both sides' it just for the sake of it. And they do at least portray the cartoon company as greedy and amoral and the cartoonists themselves as childish and limited. I think that the final message is that if you want your kids not to watch violent cartoons and to go see works of art, just exercise your parental (or scholastic) authority and make them do that, rather than demanding blanket censorship, and that's pretty fair.
Aside from all that, loads of great animation here (the meticulously set up Psycho homage is wonderful, and as already mentioned the elaborate outdoors play montage and the pitch-perfect I&S cartoons), and character moments like Bart telling Homer to get out of the way of the tv (another one of those naturalist moments that the show would not have time for later) or Krusty unable to resist goofing for the camera (Kent shouting "KRUSTY!" and the subsequent chided expression is one of my all-time favourite moments). Also lots of lovely little details like Janey having a huge telly, the protestor who holds a sign saying "Kancel David" having forgotten that the K was only there because of Krusty alliteration (another nice satirical jab). And a great guest performance by Alex Rocco - "I will not brake for you if I see you crossing the street? Wow that's cold." still gives me shivers, and I think he really gives the episode a sense of depth with the balance of comedy and drama to his line deliveries.
S02E10 - Bart Gets Hit by a Car
This is one of those episodes that has so much great stuff in it that it can't be called bad or even mediocre and yet has some general pacing and structural issues that hold it back from being top tier.
The afterlife sequence, the testimony fantasy sequences, all the Mr Burns antics, Dr Nick's debut, and of course every single moment of Lionel Hutz, it's all wonderful and hilarious. Hartman's guest role here is up there with Albert Brooks as Jacques, every line, every delivery, every visual gag, all fantastic.
But the episode has a rather lackadaisical pace and linear structure, and then falls apart at the end with a weird switch to a melodramatic tone and a contrived attempt at drama that just as suddenly wraps itself up. That needed to be half the episode, or not there at all and replaced with a snappy end gag. Defaulting to a sappy Homer/Marge ending is the show's main weak spot right now.
S02E11 - One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish
What an amazing episode. The thing that strikes me most is what a handle they've got on the tone here. We can especially see it in the way Homer, after the bad news, moves from sad moments like crying at Moe's and kissing his kids goodbye through fun moments like yelling at Burns and spending time with his Dad to silly moments like chuckling that the joke's on Flanders or immediately getting bored of spending time with his Dad. Those last two really show the writers' self-awareness - we all know that Homer's not going to die so he's going to have to buy those t-bone steaks and eat Burns' shorts, they don't even need to show the punchlines, and we know that Homer's not going to be a changed man next week (and we do get a great punchline for that under the credits). There's a little naturalism (Bart laughing at the farty ketchup bottle) and post-modernism ("Atmosphere.") around the edges, but overall it sticks within a pretty narrow range.
Pacing is great, too. Not breakneck but it never dawdles, and they trim the opening titles and play under the credits to get everything in without it feeling rushed. Lots of subtle animation, little head tilts and such, and details in the background like the consistency of that Bogart (?) poster on Barney's wall, the posters of Happy Little Elves, Bleeding Gums and Jazz Fest on Lisa's, the Japanese Duff.
And it's still so funny! Every line, every little groan or whistle, every facial expression. Lisa wearing Homer down until he agrees to go to the restaurant, the snark from the cops, the barflies' reactions to being kissed, the subtle The Graduate homage, the opening shot from inside the microwave, all brilliant. And some returning jokes: everyone having appropriate headed notepads (Things To Do, From the Mind Of Marge etc), and Homer's stubble coming back within ten seconds of shaving.
This is, to summarise, The Simpsons doing character-based single-camera sitcom at expert level. They even bother to cast four Japanese actors! This episode does no wrong!
S02E12 - The Way We Was
I didn't have much to say about this one, which surprised me as I remembered it as a very strong episode. I still enjoyed it, liked the little flourishes like Marge's entry to detention where the colour drops out and she switches to jump cuts but Homer stays at regular speed, and the strong ending gag (literally), Lovitz is great, I didn't see Marge as passive and indecisive but rather as someone making lots of decisions based on rapid input. But I guess the low stakes (not only is it a prequel so we know the ending, but it's just about whether two school kids will date or not) and loose structure moved it down slightly in my overall ranking this time.
S02E13 - Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment
Really enjoyed this one. I like the opener, emphasising the weight of both human nature and biblical teachings that will bear down on the characters as the story goes on. Three roles by Phil Hartman including Troy McClure's debut! Some cool animation with the hell and prison nightmare visions, Homer's foot coming down etc. The thing I like the most about this one, though, is the slow escalation - Homer gathering guests for the fight, Lisa's guilt growing and then the same happening to Homer as he has to hide more and more stuff and encounter more criminal characters ("Hi everybody!"). Then a smart resolution and a quick meta joke to close out. So it's got the strong structure, the animation, and it's also got the great dialogue and performances (so many top lines and well observed moments, "This is where Die Hard jumps out of the window!" or "Oh, two grapes? Who cares?!" are two of my favourites). For me, the cable tv parodies still work because they reflect the characters in who chooses to watch what. This is the show running on all cylinders.
S02E14 - Principal Charming
I don't have much to say about this one - it's solid enough but perhaps built on shaky foundations (I do love that Vertigo homage, though, it feels so... tactile) - so instead I'll talk about the second (final?) Simpsons music video, which came out around this time, Deep Deep Trouble.
The song itself is appalling (but only 3.5 mins, don't let the YouTube video runtime fool you) but the visuals are great. Lovely smooth animation, loads of cool compositions and transitions. You can feel how thoroughly storyboarded it was, and I'd love to see a dream sequence or two in season 2 or 3 that look a bit more like this. Maybe Treehouse Of Horror would have been a good place to showcase stuff like this - I reckon if the Raven segment had a bit more of this energy it would have paid off a little better.
S02E15 - Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
Fantastic episode! The dialogue is so sharp, every line's a cracker and I'm still finding new stuff in it now. DeVito is great, it moves fast without feeling rushed, it's got satirical stuff with McBain or the exec board, dark stuff with Abe being such a piece of shit (one reason I don't like that Flying Hellfish S7 episode), and light, character-based stuff with Bart and Lisa (sure there's a fair amount of that, but they're siblings - it's thematic!).
I don't really bump up against Herb betting the farm on Homer, either - he's too giddy with reunion joy to realise how much of a sub-average American Homer is (there's a version of the story here where Homer's grounded tastes combined with the engineers' knowhow make a great car, but he fucks it by rejecting all the good suggestions like the video game console and the initial design of the Homer), but aside from that his company was already struggling and he was a car manufacturer in Detroit in the 90s - he was screwed before Homer showed up.
Sure, it's a bit sitcommy, but this is a sitcom, and it's all done with such skill and panache. Part of what I love about Golden Age Simpsons is the variance in tone between episodes without every veering too wildly, and I like that this one feels a little bigger in scope (three cities! DeVito! McBain action and more Itchy & Scratchy!) and (to quote Lisa) Dickensian in tone.
S02E16 - Bart's Dog Gets an F
This does feel a bit more throwaway than a lot of the other episodes this season, but I still really enjoyed it. It feels less like 'filler' to me than Principal Charming, in that it feels less like it's been put together by pulling plot beats and character names out of a tombola, but really what does 'filler' ep mean in a sitcom anyway? This isn't Breaking Bad, and even then the so-called filler episodes of that show, like "Fly", are brilliant in my opinion. So what if an episode is plot-light if it's well-made?
So, yeah, not much story to speak of ('dog is bad, goes to training school, family will give away if fails, passes'), and the resolution is basically nicked from Crepes Of Wrath, but it's still full of funny moments and lines, and great animation (I love how Lisa's POV of a patronising Dr Hibbert is very similar to SLH's POV shots). Also, they do a really good job of giving SLH lots of personality without anthropomorphising him. I like these episodes where they take the foot off the pedal a little.
Side-notes: nice to have Tracey Ullman return to the fold, and to see Mrs Winfield again, plus lots of little details to enjoy like the character picks for dog owners at the school, Lord Smiley, Martin Sheen's Teen Scene.
S02E17 - Old Money
I didn't think much of this one, really, just a loose grab-bag of moments with some unearned and abrupt emotional arcs. Abe's in love, Abe's in mourning, Abe disowns Homer, Homer is uncharacteristically affected deeply by this, a ghost cures Abe of his mourning, Abe forgives Homer, Homer worries that Abe thinks he wants his money, Homer worries that Abe is going to lose the money, Abe is annoyed at him for stopping him, Abe is grateful to him for stopping him. It's really overworked and a lightweight but clean episode like Bart's Dog Gets An F comes off better for the juxtaposition.
Also, the "dignity's on me" ending is cloyingly sincere, and a bit hypocritical considering how much the show has mined the retirement home for dark humour up to now.
I felt like the strands of Homer trying to bank some security for himself by treating Abe better in front of his kids, and of Abe coming into money and dealing with various parties interested in it, could have been strong backbones for an episode (or two), but here they're just floating around with a bunch of other stuff.
S02E18 - Brush With Greatness
I don't have much to say about it, but I enjoyed it! I think a problem Simpsons has is that it often sets the bar very high, so a simply 'very good sitcom episode' can feel unfairly underwhelming. But there's lots of fun here, just the opening run to get to Homer's weight with Krusty's product placement, the kids bugging Homer, all the fun stuff at the water park is great. (Is this the first episode that feels like it starts off with a completely different mini-plot to lead into the main plot? I always liked that about The Simpsons, it felt like I was getting two episodes in one.) Mr Burns being a dick and ill at ease with real people is always good value, and the Jon Lovitz and Ringo Starr cameos are nice little treats on top. It's pacey and it wraps up nicely (although there's no real resolution to the Homer's weight strand).
Speaking of Homer's weight, he's apparently 6ft tall and at his heaviest here weighs 260lbs (18st8lbs or 118kg). I'm 5'11" and at times in my life I've weighed more than that (not due to a lot of muscle mass either!) and I wasn't anywhere near the kind of debilitating 'barely fit in the car, block a water flume' size that they portray here. So the way I read this is, it's a comic exaggeration of regular dad bod - Homer isn't really space-hopper-shaped with two strands of hair combed over a shiny bald head at age 34 (or 36, 38, 39 depending on the episode), this is just a representation of how it feels to come out of your twenties and see the hairline receding and the junk food no longer magically melting away. (Similarly, for example, Marge's hair isn't literally two and a half feet tall.) This reading of it can also be used to reframe what seems like a whole load of fat-shaming - Homer's difficulties at the park can be seen as a metaphor for how it feels to put on some weight, realise that your old swimming shorts don't fit so well, and feel like everyone at the pool is judging you. (Interesting that the news report says people estimate his weight as 400-500lbs, when we find out later that it's half that.)
S02E19 - Lisa's Substitute
An excellent episode, and I'm really glad it still holds up. 'Sam Etic' gives a brilliant guest performance (I know he turned out to be a creep later on, but this is going to be a fairly regular proviso unfortunately), but the voice work here is superb across the board. I don't find it saccharine but granted it is a very touching, sweet episode full of well-observed relationship dynamics rather than belly-laugh comedy. The main dynamics are Homer & Lisa and Homer & Bart, but there's also nice interactions between Marge & Lisa and Marge & Homer. All the characters are ingrained into the story in a natural way, and there's still space for lots of fun little moments from the supporting cast of teachers and pupils.
Still some gags that I hadn't caught before, like the riff on Dewey Defeats Truman. And you even get to learn a bunch of facts about cowboys and mummies!
S02E20 - The War Of The Simpsons
This one isn't quite as good as I remember it, but it's still lots of fun. I think the issue it has is that it kind of stalls out towards the end. They contrive to get Homer in the boat, then he decides to fish anyway, then Marge completely forgives him for one gesture that renews his faith in their marriage. Plus the kids misbehave until their collective guilt levels hit a certain point and then they behave again. These are ~24 minute episodes so they have to take shortcuts sometimes, but they stick out a bit here. Up until then, though, it's a solid low-key character comedy episode.
That Homer recollection sequence really is fantastic, though. It has some of that Deep Deep Trouble promo energy that I hoped the show would tap into more.
S02E21 - Three Men and a Comic Book
Fantastic episode. It's absolutely jam-packed, every few seconds there's a wonderful joke, a character moment, a background detail or all three, and a variety of humour from the inside comic book industry jokes and pre-Kevin Smith pop culture riffing (Richie Rich/Casper), through 'old women be like' to riffing on The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. And their spoofs are all so well-observed, with little details like the classic EC "Good Lord! *choke*" in the comic, or getting Daniel Stern in to do the Wonder Years-esque voiceover.
The humour definitely feels like it's stepped into more post-modern territory in this episode with the Wonder Years bit, CBG suddenly turning into a monkey's paw type character at the end, even Bart imagining a little skit with the WWI soldier. It's something we'll see more of next season iirc and probably a vibe that ties in with many people's definitions of 'Golden Age Simpsons'.
S02E22 - Blood Feud
Overall not much to say about this one except that it's another perfectly constructed sitcom episode. No big showboating plot, but the combination of excellent writing, performance and animation all working together is just dynamite. I should list the direction and editing as well, because stuff like framing closer and closer on each cut of that "the last time I saw the letter..." dialogue enhances it so much, and I love things like how they cut away from Homer gagging after chewing on his pillow just a split second early. Great stuff.
Nice to see the 'mailman' from the spy camera episode make a return, too!
S03E01 - Stark Raving Dad
So, it's obviously a bit tough trying to ignore the Michael Jacksonness of it all, but that aside...
The animation feels a little more fluid here, not sure if I'm imagining it. The couch gag itself is really nice, has great momentum and weight to it. Then Lisa and Bart's opening scene has lots of detailed body and face movement. And I don't know what the correct term for this is, but the characters feel more '3D', there's more of a tangible depth to them and their poses.
The writing is still at peak S2 level, every line is funny in a big or small way, they have callbacks like "careful men, he wets his pants", background details like the asylum sign or Snowball II (Snowball I died, she died!) sleeping on Homer's belly, there's room for some light satire with Krusty's call line or the instant witch-hunt at any mild sign of non-conformity (it's framed as anti-communist panic, but it could also be read as a jab at homophobia). And the Lisa stuff is really touching.
It's interesting that Jackson is cast as "the big White guy who thinks he's the little Black guy" when Jackson himself by this point had gone full-on whiteface, and indeed himself released the single Black Or White. Is he oblivious to the ironies or acknowledging his own... weirdness? Back when I was a kid who thought the whiteface was the only controversial thing about Jackson, I was aware of this meta aspect to it, and enjoyed the crunchiness it gave to the guest role. I enjoyed how all-in the writers and Jackson were - this was no single scene Ringo Starr cameo, Jackson was doing full-on singing (existing and bespoke songs!), the characters were moonwalking, Jackson trivia was being thrown around - but the prism they put it all through (i.e. the character is clearly not actually Michael Jackson) stops it from feeling too self-congratulatory or gratuitous. Having said all that, watching it now, it's hard to swallow what a sympathetic portrayal it is and watch moments like Bart, a young boy, saying to himself "Michael Jackson, I love you!" or 'Michael' wandering around the house secretly watching kids in their bedrooms, without shivering.
If it weren't for all that, I'd be ranking this very highly and calling it a very strong, confident opening for S3.
S03E02 - Mr Lisa Goes To Washington
I love this one!
S03E03 - When Flanders Failed
It has enough solid comedy to not be awful, but the extremes it swings between (Homer's maliciousness, Flanders' fall, the happy ending) don't have the satire of the previous episode to anchor them or the supreme tone control of Frank Capra, so it all feels a little... off-model. (Speaking of which, as mentioned, this is a noticeably less attractive episode by season 2/3 standards - oversized pupils abound!)
However, I do sympathise for Homer here a little more than some. Flanders has been subtly characterised over the past two seasons as someone who has a tendency to rub his wealth in Homer's face, plus he really is very annoying. And he dropped a successful career for what seems until the ending like a pretty stupid idea! I can see myself deciding not to pass on recommendations to the store in that situation tbh. It's only when it gets to the yard sale that it starts to feel really vicious.
S03E04 - Bart The Murderer
I think this episode is fantastic, I got excited just seeing the thumbnail on Disney+! The structure is perfect, the humour is more subtle than some episodes (love the horse race commentary and lines like "The kiss of death, that's just what I need.") but the gag rate is just as high, and it looks fantastic - there are no ropey background characters or off-model animations, loads of great lighting, a fun dream sequence, and lots of lovely flourishes like the camera swinging from side to side as Tony shows Bart the room or even the composition of the guns pointed at Bart's head as he lays at the bottom of the steps. Mantegna is fantastic, Hartman gets loads of great bits ("WELCOME TO THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY") and there's even a fun cameo. And the end gag is a belter.
S03E05 - Homer Defined
[No notes, but very good episode!]
S03E06 - Like Father, Like Clown
[No notes, but very good episode!]
We know that the Mr Burns segment isn't canon if for no other reason than he uses a right-handed ice-cream scoop on Homer's brain!
S03E13 - Radio Bart
Another great one. Good story (mainly riffing on Ace In The Hole, which I recommend), lots of fun pranks and celebrity culture riffs, and I enjoy the deliciously ironic punishment meted out on Bart. No big showy sequences, but the animation is looking really good in this one.
Thought it was interesting that Princess Kashmir is now a local celebrity for some reason. That could have been a way in to developing her as a character. Maybe the Homer photo made her like a proto-Kardashian type. (Now I come to think of it, Zombie Simpsons must have done a Kardashian riff at some point. Wonder if they used Kashmir.)
S03E14 - Lisa The Greek
We're at the point where even the weaker episodes are still great, so I really like this one, but it does feel like it's retreading old ground with Homer and Lisa, the Marge/Bart story isn't as well integrated as it could be, and Homer's redemption is a little passive. Still, all the usual strengths carry it through, and again I'm struck by how nice the moment to moment animation looks now. Everyone's on model, smooth and expressive, with good '3D' movement, backgrounds are nicely detailed etc.
Couple of points of interest for me:
Troy McClure has the "we're the original odd couple" line, which gets a callback in a later episode. I was never quite sure if I'd understood the joke properly, but this clinches it.
The spoofing of a rudimentary 3D animated title sequence for the football show, I guess this is riffing on something that actually existed at the time. I suppose that must have been the hip new post-Terminator 2 craze in tv production, what with Def Leppard's Let's Get Rocked music video coming out in 1992 as well.
S03E14 - Homer Alone
Solid episode. There's a bit of a tone shift once Marge heads off, it all feels a bit more serious and even psychologically naturalistic at some points before that (the tipping point of a horribly cruel radio prank leading to Marge's primal scream of "NOOOO" before screeching to a halt and just shutting down really sticks out to me) but then switches to lightweight comedy. There's not much meat to the plot and the 'Maggie goes missing' doesn't do much to add to that or convincingly create tension. All that said, lots of great jokes, animation and acting as usual, the runner of Maggie seeing different Marge-shaped things is great, and it's nice to have an episode that deals with Marge's endless frustration and stress without going to the threat of divorce.
It's a shame that Marge never really breaks out of the 'harried housewife' role, as far as I can remember for the entirety of Golden Age Simpsons, and probably beyond. Even Tory McClure gets more character development than she does. An example that jumps to mind is Monica in Friends - kind of bland at first, but as the show went on they added 'OCD/neurotic', 'intense sibling rivalry/relationship' and 'used to be fat'. Not a deep psychological profile or anything (and of course problematic in parts as with the show as a whole) but if you layer up enough of those simple elements you get a strong comedy character to work with. And I don't think Marge ever really gets that work done.
S03E15 - Bart The Lover
Fantastic episode, really glad this stood up to my memories of it! The story is jam-packed but never feels overstuffed, the dialogue is crackerjack and layered (like the fun reveal that Rev Lovejoy is the guy Flanders was chasing to give back a quarter), and there are tons of little details everywhere like the magazine Edna flips through, the Springfield Retirement Castle return address on one of her opened envelopes that Bart flips through, the badly colourised movie, Flanders' list of possible bad influences, the terrible-sounding Ernest sequel, even the gum under the desk in Bart's brief dream sequence. And though there's nothing too showy, the animation and direction has some great touches like Bart fading to silhouette and then slowly panning and dissolving into a shot of Edna trying on an outfit that then uses a series of jump cuts.
I love the awful Zinc educational short, and the observational comedy of a performance that feels incredibly cheesy and depressing to adults nevertheless winning the minds and hearts of a bunch of school kids (you can feel new neural paths forming in Lisa and Janey when they fall in love with Sparkles), and then the short-lived schoolwide fad. And even if it doesn't even attempt to integrate with the main story, the dog house/Todd Flanders/swear jar B-plot is a perfect joke delivery system.
Also a good example of how the show was successfully fleshing out its supporting characters organically through good storytelling at this point - Edna gets more sympathetic and we learn more about her (the recent divorce, the home life etc). Sidenote: I want to learn more about the two kids with the colour-tinted glasses!
S03E17 - Homer At The Bat
Another excellent episode, more of a comedy-heavy one than Bart The Lover. A ton of great guest performances (though I actually quite liked Ringo Starr's performance, so people may not agree with me on this) with a proto version of the celebrity auto-fun-poking that would show up in The Larry Sanders Show half a year later. Darryl Strawberry in particular is excellent. The gag-heavy post-modern feel that Golden Age Simpsons is known for is in full effect here. I love the nine misfortunes sequence, and the way that Wonderbat is unceremoniously dumped out of the story - just in a practice session, not even in a real game!
I barely know anything about baseball but I'm still able to follow the story and the jokes. There's loads of great animation. Good use of the supporting cast (lots of Burns and Smithers business, of course, but also some fun appearances from the cops, Moe and Barney, and Dr Hibbert, plus Lenny, Carl and even Charlie.) And the music is excellent in this episode: lots of echoing of the 'take me out to the ball game' motif in the score, the lovely final song (which I assume is riffing on something) and even a bespoke version of the Gracie Films jingle!
Great great great!
S03E18 - Separate Vocations
There are some nice ideas in here that don't really get fully examined. It's a pretty loose episode that relies a lot on pop culture references, and the whole 'telling kids/people what they can or can't do becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy' thing gets lost halfway through.
Still, those ideas do get a bit of play. I love Lisa's disaffected voice ("I dunno, you?") and the way she's a smarter troublemaker, able to laser-point the ways to disrupt or rile the teachers the most. And the pop culture riffs are still great.
S03E19 - Dog Of Death
Well, if Golden Age Simpsons can be said to have filler episodes, this would be one of them. It's perfectly cromulent, but there's a lot of padding (the entire lottery section at the top could be cut - I normally like it when the show fits in a little 'mini-episode' up top, but ideally it at least kicks off the main plot!) and some weird tonal shifts, with the middle section of them realising the dog is sick, struggling to pay for the surgery and then resenting it noticeably jarring with the mob mentality/crazy scheme Homer and cartoon dog/Burns antics either side of it. Then all problems simply resolve themselves and it ends on a terrible 'no animals were harmed' joke.
I do enjoy the episode, but I would have preferred if it had stuck to the tone of the middle section. I really enjoyed the return to early-era Simpsons where it's a fairly mundane plot and they still have everyday financial concerns. It's a very relatable story, and it still has time for smart funny writing like the sequence of them all suffering due to their sacrifices - especially the cruel twist of Marge not winning the lottery, the writers really know how to stick the knife in sometimes! As it is, it's neither fish nor fowl.
S03E20 - Colonel Homer
I like this one okay, but it's a lot more lightweight than I'd remembered it. I wish they'd come up with some other dramatic tension than 'Marge is immediately and aggressively opposed to Homer's success', because it makes her pretty unsympathetic and the episode is a lot more entertaining when the family are having fun and pitching in with Lurleen's promotion. The stuff with Lurleen becoming attracted to and propositioning Homer is potentially interesting but seeing as he's barely if at all tempted it feels more like a way to quickly return everything to the status quo. I do think it's the right choice to have Homer pretty much act above reproach here - his loyalty to Marge is pretty much the one thing he's got going for him as a husband and if he were also a philanderer he'd be pretty unbearable and hard to laugh at/with as a character. So maybe the 'he's suddenly on the road the whole time, having a crappy job is actually not so bad if it means he gets to spend time with his family' angle would have been the smarter way to go, I dunno.
I guess part of it is that Marge isn't really developed far beyond the 'naggy sitcom wife' stereotype, but it's a lot less fun when success is ripped from the Simpsons' hands due to her having moral quandaries about bilking money out of an evil billionaire or immediately assuming Homer is cheating on her, rather than due to Homer designing the worst car ever or whatever. In "Homer's Night Out" (the Princess Kashmir one), I thought her actions were understandable and reasonable, here I find them frustrating and a bit contrived.
S03E21 - Black Widower
Now this is how you do a character return episode! Just a really good fun murder thriller bolstered with lots of character comedy.
S03E22 - The Otto Show
Once it's finished using up a third of its runtime on a collection of ersatz Spinal Tap gags, this episode is lightweight but fun. Skinner's probably my favourite part of it.
As I don't have much to say on this one: I've been thinking about how I had always hoped that they would keep updating the opening titles with new or changed details, like replacing sandwich guy with Burns and Smithers, and what they actually could have done without making it feel too busy or indulgent. I reckon having Hans Moleman as the supermarket cashier, sticking a few more known schoolkid characters in Lisa's music class and maybe adding Groundskeeper Willie outside the school would work quite well.
S03E23 - Bart's Friend Falls In Love
This is a good one. Lots of great gags, and little background details like the awful-sounding movies at the cinema or Bart's sidekick Milhouse having a Sideshow Mel poster up (alongside the Spın̈al Tap one). I think this is maybe the first mention of 'Nam from Skinner, or at least the first 'dark backstory' joke? Love how they sell it just with a simple bit of blocking and lighting.
It's weird, though, I seem to have remembered a lot of these episodes as being a lot tighter and denser story-wise than they are, like up there with Seinfeld, but actually they're still doing stuff like throwing a Raiders spoof in at the start for zero reason, not tying the B-plot in with the A-plot at all, and bringing everything to a rather hasty resolution. They do think to bring the 8-ball back in at the end, though, which is neat. I also like how they keep the puberty/sex theme going throughout, with the Troy McClure video, Otto's reason for having to leave on time, and even Bart's chalkboard message (I hope that's referring to teachers' bra straps, or at least older students, though - don't really want to have to think about Sherri and Terri wearing training bras).
S03E24 - Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes
Another good 'returning character' episode! Good point by Thursday that there's not much conflict here, but I do like these low-key slice of life ones where it's not 'oh no Marge and Homer are definitely breaking up this time' or 'Bart gets elected mayor' or whatever. It's full of great writing, the Space Odyssey riff is really nicely done and doesn't feel gratuitous, DeVito is great as always (his readings of the baby translator lines are brilliant) and it resolves a hanging emotional thread for Homer.
I don't mind the baby translator continuity thing - either going forward this is a fictional universe in which it's an accepted fact of life that characters now find it a bit easier to work out whether a baby has shat itself, or that company bought the idea off Herb and for whatever reason it got stuck in some kind of legal purgatory before making it to market. It would be fun to see the product on a shelf in the background at some point as a little easter egg, but anything more involved and permanent than that isn't really the level of continuity that Simpsons goes for (at least in the Golden Age), that's more of a Futurama or Dan Harmon type thing.
S04E01 - Kamp Krusty
A perfectly reasonable way to open the season. Nothing too special, but a solid story to hang lots of funny moments off. It feels a little regressive, bit of a S1/2 vibe, especially with the Bart focus and the similar story to Crepes Of Wrath. A surprising amount of weird off-model moments, too.
Famously considered as the first Simpsons movie plot, which is a bit odd as there's not enough meat to it that I can imagine this stretching out to 90 minutes or so. It would be a pretty narrow focus for a Simpsons movie, and I just can't imagine it being that good.
S04E02 - A Streetcar Named Marge
An excellent episode! The Homer and Marge storyline has a light touch, the Streetcar stuff is great, Lovitz is fantastic as always (his director role has been ripped off at least a few times I can think of, like Alfred Molina's Children's Theater Critic sketch or Jason Mantzoukas as the director of the Karate Kid play in Community), and the Addams Family Values-esque (weird that I'm evoking that again) Maggie sideplot is really fun and well executed. And we even get a bonus Phil Hartman!
I suspect a lot of stuff here went over my head the first time I watched it and I'm probably picking up on stuff now even since the last time I watched it (did I get the The Birds reference? Did I clock the joke of the paper boy getting his own musical number?). It also struck me that this precedes A Fish Called Selma for a non-existent musical adaptation of a movie (play/book) and Homer And Apu for a song by Apu ending in a falsetto "oooo"!
I think what makes this my favourite kind of episode is that it still has time for comedy bits and spoofs, like the beauty pageant on tv, but they all arise from the story organically. It doesn't just feel like the writers had a bunch of 'wouldn't it be funny if' index cards up on a wall and just grabbed fifteen of them and then thought of a story to somehow string them together. I enjoy those episodes too, but they don't feel to me like Simpsons reaching its full potential.
The ending is maybe a little lacklustre, but I kinda like how they keep it low-key and how Homer hasn't has a life-changing epiphany but maybe he's had 1% of one.
S04E02 - Homer The Heretic
Another excellent episode! Tight story, loads of great gags, nicely directed action, all looks really good. One of my favourite bits of dialogue in the "miscellaneous" bit. Don't think I can find a single fault here, this season is off to a cracking start.
Also, the oft-noted bit of trivia for this episode: God has four fingers (and a thumb) rather than the usual Simpsons three!
S04E04 - Lisa The Beauty Queen
A good episode but perhaps a little more lightweight than the two that came before it.
It does feel like it fast-tracks the resolution a bit - Lisa effortlessly gets second place, Lisa steps in to first place, Lisa is asked to promote cigarettes, Lisa decides not to, Lisa is disqualified but happy, all pushed through very quickly - but it's still a solid foundation for hanging a load of jokes off. Plus, her feeling better about herself can be read as a combination of 'I'm not ugly even if I'm not a first-placer, my father loves me enough to make big sacrifices, and I have a strong moral compass that I'm proud of'.
This episode felt particularly heavy on the dream sequences and cutaways, the style that the show would pretty much single-handedly make the default in the genre for the next decade or so. They're all really good so that's fine by me!
S04E05 - Treehouse of Horror III
Bit of a letdown, this one. The framing story is pretty dull (and the Homer parental warning feels like some Fox executives insisted on putting one in and then tried to cover it with some Simpsons comedy but decided to write it themselves), and the Kong section is the worst kind of spoof, just copying an existing story beat for beat but with different characters subbed in and the occasional 'I said the quiet bit loud' joke. The killer doll one is really good, just because they have a bunch of good jokes for it and they're not worried about following the Child's Play story or whatever so it ends up having a fun improvisational quality. The zombies one does have a handful of good jokes, and they start to let loose with the inexplicable celebrity zombies right at the end, but it gets a bit bogged down with plot (which is a weird thing to say for a six minute zombie apocalypse comedy riff, but there it is).
I wonder if Grampa shouting "EPA! EEEEPA!" in the movie was a callback to him saying "Eeeeevil" here.
S04E06 - Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie
S04E07 - Marge Gets a Job
S04E08 - New Kid on the Block
S04E09 - Mr Plow
Was away for work, so I managed to keep up to date on these but didn't have time to post opinions. Honestly, though, my opinion is just that they're all really good. They've landed on a tone of relatable character-driven plots filled with non-stop heightened gags, and it's really working, even if as mentioned they sacrifice some narrative structure and character comedy. There's about a hundred cutaway jokes per episode, which can get a bit much especially after thirty years of every other show , but there's still loads of other great stuff in there, like Homer arguing with SLH in the hammock and the (a?) pay-off to four seasons of the running prank call bit.
We even got a black and white with pastels fantasy sequence, so some of the old stuff is still in there!
S04E10 - Lisa's First Word
A solid episode, but pretty saccharine and toothless overall. It regularly felt like any old sitcom. So I was glad for moments where they undercut that a bit, like cruelly laughing at Grandpa. It still has a bunch of great moments in it, though. I like Krusty's little subplot running through it.
Funny that the flashback timeline is already starting to slip - Lisa is born in 1984, which makes her 8 here, but would have made her 5 when the show started.
I think the joke about the cousin is probably more problematic for using coming out as trans as a sign of 'going crazy' than for the deadnaming/misgendering...
S04E11 - Homer's Triple Bypass
I don't think I've seen this one! How can that be possible? I've watched through the first several seasons at least a few times. Did this one get left out of the UK DVD boxsets or something? Really weird. Yet also very cool to have a Golden Age episode that I've never seen before! Okay, am off to watch the rest of it, had to get up to the breakfast scene before I was 100% I'd not seen it before.
Okay, so it's one of those episodes where they have a vey slender plot as an excuse to do a bunch of skits. This one was the extreme version of that, where some of the skits were themselves little collections of skits! And the efforts to compensate for a downer of a story are pretty clear in the animation and direction too, where everything is amped up to 11. It's like the show itself is mugging to the camera. But all that said, the skits and the mugging are funny, I got a lot of laughs out of it. I almost could have done without the few moments of soppiness, tbh. Either go full One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish or don't bother, rather than making a few half-hearted (lol) attempts.
All in all, nice to find out that my high opinion of GA Simpsons is not pure nostalgia, and the show does actually hold up to the point where I can really enjoy a S4 episode for the first time in 2025.
S04E12 - Marge Vs The Monorail
Excellent episode. I think the strong plot and action finale help offset the heightened cartoonishness, it has a strong handle on its tone and isn't just a series of gags strung together. It doesn't feel to me as far a leap from season 2 as, say, the previous episode did.
Really enjoy the commitment to showing off the array of secondary and tertiary characters here, including the sofa gag. A high Princess Kashmir quotient this episode! Also there's that one weird Kent Brockman clone at the opening ceremony - I guess it's a fan in costume?
And it's nice seeing Phil Hartman get more of an Albert Brooks type role. It's pretty much the same as all his other roles, but he's still great at it!
S04E13 - Selma's Choice
Yeah, this one is just about fine, it's just the kind of anonymous mid-season filler you don't normally get with GA Simpsons. Not particularly strong in terms of story or jokes. It actually has a season 1 feel in parts.
S04E14 Brother From The Same Planet
It's very good! Noticeably riff-heavy but also has the solid storyline. And I do love that Bobby Sherman scene, great acting and animation from Lisa that defuses a mildly tense scene in a very human and adorable way. I also love the 'words that rhyme with Corey' scene, so I guess that subplot is my favourite element of the episode and probably not coincidentally the most grounded. Also telling that it's a runner from earlier seasons where Lisa would read Non-Threatening Boys magazine and such.
S04E15 - I Love Lisa
On that note, this episode is closer overall to my preferred Simpsons tone (though I like the other tones and I very much appreciate that there is such a spectrum) - still packed full of gags but all a bit more character-based and grounded, more adult humour and sophisticated editing. Ralph eating a crayon, pulling out from the shot of Ralph to reveal it's now later and Bart is pausing and rewinding the video, even Skinner having a 'Nam flashback, these are all 'stickier' for me than Homer wrestling up and down Springfield Gorge or whatever.
The needle-drop at the end works well here, but they do start to get lazy with these as the show goes on, finding contrived ways to include one rather than come up with a proper satisfying ending.
Forgot to say this when we first got the circus line couch gag, but: if Family Guy was hoping to hide what a blatant Simpsons clone it was, they really shouldn't have ripped off its most famous opening gag for their opening titles (which, to make things worse, were the same every week thus highlighting how much more inventive The Simpsons was).
S04E16 - Duffless
This one is great until the end where they basically just give up on both storylines. And here's an example, earlier than I expected, of them getting lazy with contriving ways to use needle-drops as substitute endings.
Apart from that, though, the level of absurdity/exaggeration is perfectly pitched throughout and I also love where they've got Lisa at the moment - smart, but not above messing with Bart, a prideful daydream or a bit of revenge. I also really like how Bart discovering her journal is deflated immediately.
S04E17 - Last Exit to Springfield
An excellent episode! So much stuff going on, it feels like it's an hour long. And again, a really good balance of tone with a bunch of cultural riffs and cutaways but also lots of great character comedy. So many classic bits, and the Lisa song is genuinely wonderful. Also fun that they do a Batman '89 homage, then a Batman '66 homage over which the score pastiches Elfman's '89 theme. Also like the Jeremy Irons-esque dentist. I remember this as being the first time I recognised something that was being spoofed (Chuck Jones' Grinch) and being delighted because it was a personal favourite that I hadn't seen much cultural conversation around. Gave me a little frisson of smugness and delight.
S04E18 - So It's Come To This, A Simpsons Clipshow
I was ready to say that even the framing of this episode feels cobbled together - the edutainment vibe of the Baal worship sequence, the weird cutaway to one Springfield resident getting April Fooled when the story is already underway (surely a sequence of three or four of them getting fooled at the start of the episode would work better?) - but actually the Homer/Bart stuff is great, feels like 'a proper episode'. Sure, the prank escalation structure is familiar, but they do it so well and that final moment with the beer can is brilliant. I also like the initial selection of clips as a sort of serialised justification for why Homer gets stupider every year - he keeps getting hit on the head and electroshocked! Also the painful contrivance of bringing back a veterinarian into a hospital scene just to squeeze one more clip out was knowingly funny, and Bart starting to use the format just to get to rewatch some Itchy & Scratchy was good - I wish they'd gone more along these lines, something more like the Kevin Smith/Dan Harmon meta clip show episodes we'd get a few years later. But there's a fair amount of the more typical, lazy clip show stuff going on and they don't even pick particularly good clips half of the time. I think it ends pretty strong though, from the Bart-rate monitor (sorry) onwards. "Why me laugh?" probably would have got classic meme status if it weren't in a clip show episode.
But it would behoove us to remember that clip show episodes allowed shows to save more of their budget for other episodes, and also benefited viewers who didn't want to (or have access to) buy 28 episodes across 14 VHS releases, or didn't have every episode recorded on home tapes. So hooray for this mostly rubbish episode!
S04E19 - The Front
I like this one, mainly thanks to the high Itchy & Scratchy content and self-reflexive humour. Always great to get more Krusty, too, and Abe has a bunch of top lines. The Homer plotline is pretty perfunctory and doesn't tie into the other story at all, but it has some fun bits and pieces. Shame they didn't get the guest back for Roger Meyers Jr, but Azaria does okay.
I hesitate to call it filler, just because the story doesn't feel bog-standard (although it's kind of the mirror opposite of Itchy & Scratchy & Marge) and they're clearly having fun with the cartoon stuff, but I don't find that a controversial label either, especially as it literally has a filler sketch at the end, and it's certainly lightweight.
Re. the Ren & Stimpy dig, from Wikipedia: the clip from the nominated The Ren & Stimpy Show is merely a black screen with the text "clip not done yet" a reference to the series' frequent failure to meet deadlines. This was a counterattack against Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, who had attacked The Simpsons staff by saying that "the show succeeded despite the writing", and similarly derogatory comments.
What a dick.
S04E20 - Whacking Day
On my previous watchthrough many years ago, I noted this as the moment where episodes I actually dislike start showing up. It's not as bad as I remember it (for one, it introduces Chalmers and his dynamic with Skinner is 90% there already), but still feels pretty lazy. The two stories don't tie in together and don't have much meat to them, and the random celebrity cameo is the kind of thing you'd see in a crappy 80s sitcom with seemingly no irony. It feels like South Park S2, like they had got a bunch of different writers in to mimic the house style and they did a pretty good job but everything is just a little rushed and repetitive of previous episodes and has less integrity.
S04E21 - Marge In Chains
Top-notch Later Golden Age Simpsons, with the classic top-heavy plot progression that makes you feel like you just watched three episodes, and near-suffocating rate of cutaway gags (only one or two of which were a bit rough here). Good story, good gag rate, good Phil Hartman levels.
Best line: "Hey, watch it!"
S04E22 - Krusty Gets Kancelled
Great episode! It has a solid story to hang stuff off, with the high joke rate but they feel a bit less arbitrary, not too many cutaway gags, and a great bit of razzle-dazzle with the guest star line-up. I especially like bringing Barry White back for the one joke.
Best line: "Oh no, Bette Midlerrrr!"
S05E01 - Homer's Barbershop Quartet
This one's pretty weak. Just because right at the end of the latter they lampshade the fact that it's just taking random characters and crowbarring them into a genre parody doesn't fix that issue. (Also the continuity's pretty messy, with Santa's Little Helper already present before Maggie is born, though that stuff doesn't bother me too much.) We seem to be expected to genuinely enjoy these irritating songs over and over again. And most egregiously, the jokes are sparse and not particularly good.
S05E02 - Cape Feare
I enjoy this more on a rewatch than I did originally, as I'm prepared for it to be a sillier more slapstick episode than the mystery set-ups of the first two Sideshow Bob episodes. I do still think it sags a bit in the middle where it's just a bunch of 'making Bob look silly' and 'parody this one film' jokes, but overall it's a very good episode, full of classic bits, and Grammar is excellent as always.
Speaking of classic bits, though - I know it's a fan favourite, but the rake gag never really worked for me. It never came out of the other side from repetitive back to funny. I think if it had shown him getting whacked by the third rake in the wide shot, then cutting to Homer and Marge where we hear him step into another one offscreen, the escalation would have worked for me. I think what bugs me is that we see him going back to the same rake at least three times at which point it just doesn't make sense to me, it becomes almost too Beckett-esque for me to find funny. (I should clarify that I'm thinking through why it doesn't work for me, not saying it's objectively bad or anything). I did like the callback to it later in the episode when he gets on the boat and steps on another rake, though.
The 'Bart runs back to the bow, sees the exact same crocodile clip, and says "Oh yeahhhh"' joke is in the same vein but works better for me.
And finally, that joke about Grandpa coming off his meds is probably worthy of discussion. I appreciate that as a cis person I'm not best suited to judge the level of problematic here, but it doesn't feel too mean-spirited or even a direct swipe at trans people. It certainly feels less egregious than stuff that would come up in future episodes (that S16 one about the lesbian wedding springs to mind).
S05E03 - Homer Goes To College
To quote the episode, "why does it have to be zany?" This one is actually worse than I remember it. Directionless collection of wacky gags, most of which don't work and trip over themselves, and the beginnings of Jerkass Homer with him acting like an obnoxious cruel 4 year old throughout. I quite liked the nerds with their nose bleeds and ear medicine (although again some stuff just doesn't work like them apparently not understanding that you shouldn't unplug a tv while people are watching it) but not much else worked for me at all. I can't remember which episode it was that I said this about recently, but again I got the feeling of a different writers team getting brought in and making an uncanny valley facsimile of the actual good show.
S05E04 - Rosebud
This is a fantastic one, the show's back on form. It feels like a classic S2/3 episode (it even has a 'gahhh, they could have been rich if not for some stupid decision!' element) but with just the right amount of S4 zaniness sprinkled on top mmmm sprinkles. Every joke lands, Homer's stupidity is pitched correctly, the cutaways are used judiciously, and there are some nice animation moments like the Bobo montage, the phone struggle or the future epilogue.
S05E05 - Treehouse of Horror IV
This one doesn't work for me, feels like a bunch of first draft ideas thrown together. Nothing particularly interesting or funny. The devil one is the most successful (probably because it's least beholden to its source), the gremlin one is pretty much just the TZ story redone beat for beat without any good gags to make up for it, and the Burns one is a directionless hodge-podge of vampire movie references. And the connecting bits aren't much cop either.
These are always a bit spotty, but there's normally at least one stand-out and I don't think there's one here. ToH II is still the high point so far.
S05E06 - Marge on the Lam
I like how it starts off like a S2 marital crisis episode except really low-key where it's just Marge getting a bit irritated and taking an evening to herself so it doesn't feel repetitive, and how it slowly moves into the goofy S5 tone; I also enjoyed seeing Ruth Powers again, wish they'd made more of her (and her daughter), they're good wild cards to throw into the mix.
It really just comes off the rails in the last few minutes where it sacrifices Marge's character for the sake of moving into full-on movie spoof (up till this point I felt like it was staying just on the right side of hitting tropes and moments rather than following a movie's story beat by beat) and then jarringly jumps to a Dragnet spoof in lieu of coming up with a proper ending. If it weren't for that last segment, this would probably be a lot higher up in my Fond Faves list.
Sidenote: I love The Hate Box, I want to go there.
S05E07 - Bart's Inner Child
I enjoyed this episode just fine (it's one of those weird ones where I must have watched it at least a couple of times before and yet I don't remember it), but it feels pretty directionless. It's an Albert Brooks episode but he's not central to the plot, it starts out (after the aforementioned classic mini-episode opening act anyway) seeming like a Marge episode but then she takes a backseat to a riff on self-help which acts like it's Bartcentric but isn't really, and then basically everyone in Springfield including the Simpsons just give up on the story and go get some cider/watch a tv parody instead.
The message of the episode seems to be partly that which Lisa suggests at the end, but mainly 'no we're not going to put work into deepening these characters'. (Which is kind of ironic, considering this episode feels like a big step towards changing Lisa into the nagging know-it-all mini-Marge of post-Golden Age Simpsons that no one likes.)
Odd choice to have Marge sleeping naked in that one scene (although in the close-up it seems like they goofed and put her in her nightie).
I could probably have watched an entire episode of Homer Vs Trampoline.
S05E08 - Boy Scoutz N the Hood
A good one! A variety of story bits without feeling disjointed, well pitched tone and Homer-levels, great guest star. If I recall correctly, the later 'cabin fever' episode with Burns and Homer is basically a redo of the lost at sea stuff here except with the tone and Homer-level set too high, showing what a delicate balance it can be.
Favourite joke: the kids cheering at the mention of From Here To Eternity.
S05E09 - The Last Temptation of Homer
[no notes, think this one is okay?]
S05E10 $pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)
This episode is fine, it has lots of funny moments in it, but it's another one of those where it's pretty much just twenty minutes of riffs on a topic. Like the writers room just wrote CASINO on an index card, came up with 50 jokes and then just kind of wrangled them into a vague semblance of a plot. These episodes never work as well as the ones where the jokes come organically from the narrative.
The Marge angle doesn't really work for me - she gets addicted, they tell her not to be, then she's still addicted, then they tell her not to be again and it works this time and that's that. No actual ending so, ehhh, just have Marge kiss Homer as they walk into the sunset with some sweet music, that always works.
S05E11 - Homer the Vigilante
Not a big fan of this one. It has some semblance of a plot but one that falls apart halfway through, and I just don't find many of the gags funny enough to hold it all together. It all feels very tame and directionless. The ending in particular reminded me of the Thelma & Louise episode, where they run out of story and just decide to parody a particular movie until time runs out. It's starting to feel more and more regularly like the writers room just decided 'good enough'. Even the 'there's a cat burglar' concept feels like something they came up with by throwing darts.
I did enjoy Homer doing his thinking pose while dancing to the jug.
This episode is a bit tougher to watch with all the ICE stuff currently going on.
S05E12 - Bart Gets Famous
I really like this one. The story is a little slight and it takes a while to get going, but it's solid and it leads to some great extended bits like the box factory or the 'everyone says his catchphrase' montage, while still allowing for meta riffs like the ending. There's a bit of overlap with the monkey paw ToH segment (I think) where the Simpsons all get so famous that everyone's sick of them, but it's mostly new ground here and it's always fun to have Krusty in the mix. Could have done with an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon.
S05E13 - Homer And Apu
I think that, putting aside the problematic elements that are Apu and James Woods, this one's great - strong story, loads of great gags and a wonderful song.
At some point down the line from here I start to feel like the songs are shoehorned in, but for some reason this one works for me. I guess it's because it's intertwined with the 'time for a big happy ending!' stuff from Homer, it's emphasising the narrative structure. It's not just 'here is a new group of characters, let's sing about them'.
I also always used to think of this as the moment that the guest appearances became arbitrary and contrived. I'm not sure why it was this one and not Borgnine, I guess because Borgnine is a much smaller part of his episode and his relative lack of relevance is part of the joke, so it doesn't feel like they got the hottest new celebrity in. James Woods worked better for me on this viewing, I guess because it does at least have the 'method actor takes menial job as research' riff to hang off, which works better post-'Daniel Day Lewis became a cobbler for three years'. (I wonder what examples they were riffing off in 1994.) Also, his performance and animation is all great. I guess the thing that bugged me about it was them leaning into the cheesiness of it with the two Kwik-E-Mart execs taking half a minute to explain to the viewer who Woods is, and the alien joke at the end feels forced.
'I Just Got That!' Corner - "Marge with hair by Frank Lloyd Wright."
S05E14 - Lisa Vs Malibu Stacey
I really want to like this one - it's story-heavy, it's got Kathleen Turner, and there's an interesting Lisa set-up. But half of it is taken up with Grandpa antics who isn't my least favourite character but a little of him goes a loooong way, there's not very much to the Lisa story at all, and I just didn't find myself laughing that much throughout.
S05E15 - Deep Space Homer
This episode is fantastic. The story is lean but there's enough to it to keep the gags rolling, and sure it's out there but we had Homer mistaken for Bigfoot in S1 so fuck it. And wow, the gags in this one are amazing, they're jampacked in and there are so many classics in one episode! What really struck me was the confidence, partly in some of the super-quick editing like the sequence from the shuttle crashing into the convention building all the way to Homer watching the parade on tv, and partly in the subtle subversion of expectations like Homer actually managing to do a couple of cartwheels and get half a limerick out before crashing into a wall, or "Sir, how would you like to get higher than you've ever been in your life?"/"Be an astronaut? Sure."
Also some gorgeous animation, especially the Blue Danube scene. And the guest actors are great too. Aldrin is mostly just okay but his delivery of "Second comes just after first!" (and just the fact that he had the good humour to go with it) is wonderful, and Taylor is strong. They also don't feel as contrived as other appearances (though I'm not sure if Taylor being there to play to the astronauts is a riff on something, either real or fictional).
Only real nitpicks are that the Popeye and Nixon gags clash rather than build on each other and that the end gag is a bit too random (though at least they bothered to come up with something and it's a strong end beat rather than just fizzling out).
S05E16 - Homer Loves Flanders
S05E17 - Bart Gets an Elephant
S05E18 - Burns' Heir
S05E19 - Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song
I'm kind of running out of things to say while the episodes are all this good, but Baadasssss Song in particular is a standout. Again, love the confidence in stuff like the Kwik-E-Mart explosion gag.
S05E20: The Boy Who Knew Too Much
I really enjoy most of this episode, all the Skinner/Bart and Skinner/Homer stuff is especially great. But I find both Fred Quimby and the waiter really grating and the humour around them too loud and broad. Just two very irritating grains of sand in what is otherwise a pearl of an episode (is that how that metaphor works?).
S05E21 - Lady Bouvier's Lover
Not a big fan of this one. A lot of the jokes don't land, the editing gets sloppy, they sacrifice Mr Burns' character to fit him into the episode, and I didn't really care about Abe's romance angle (not even as much as the Skinner/Selma one iirc). Also, how on earth did they not complete the lawyer and toughs bit by having them show up a third time for the Graduate pastiche? Off the top of my head, have them running after the bus in the last shot as it fades to black.
S05E22 - Secrets of a Successful Marriage
A nice, gentle episode, it kept me chuckling throughout if not guffawing. Interesting to see a 'Homer and Marge might break up' episode with Homer in S5 jerkass mode - his fall has to be more extreme and his return more pathetic to compensate.
S06E01 - Bart Of Darkness
A very strong episode, well structured story with lots of laffs. If I had to nitpick, the ending with Martin singing is a tiny bit weak.
S06E02 - Lisa's Rival
Another one of those episodes where the only thing to hold against it is the general very high standards of the show. This is basically a standard sitcom episode done very very well. Which is fine! It's a sitcom! It's just not in the highest echelons of Simpsons, it's merely very solid.
I do really like the resolution of the Lisa story with neither of them winning, that's a nice subversion.
Homer is getting into Kramer territory here, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but the writers are noticeably more comfortable with allowing him to be less grounded for the sake of a showy bit of performance and animation.
S06E03 -Another Simpsons Clip Show
This clip show feels a lot tackier than the previous one, pretending that the old footage is new, and just replaying huge chunks of previous episodes. Also, a bit mean-spirited to reveal that Mindy, like Homer's other temptation Lurleen, became an alcoholic. Surprised we don't see Princess Kashmir rolling around in the gutter every episode.
S06E04 - Itchy & Scratchyland
This one is fun but there is zero subtlety to any of the jokes, everything is underlined and hammered home. I think it's the first time I've really felt spoken down to by the show.
I like the absurdity of "possibli go wrong" but not the "Uh, POSSIBLY go wrong. That's the first thing that's ever gone wrong" bit at the end. I like the Bort scene and even the callback to it, but I don't like the heavy focus on and repetition of the callback. These are the kinds of overcooked moments I'm talking about when I say the episode felt very unsubtle.
S06E05 - Sideshow Bob Roberts
[no notes - think this one's okay?]
S06E06 - Treehouse Of Horror V
It's a testament to the rest of this episode that despite the Shinning segment being so rubbish it's still one of my favourite TOHs.
The Shinning is the epitome of 'just retell the movie but with our characters' laziness, and its only contribution to the episode is setting up the excellent Groundskeeper Willie runner. (Okay, fine, the ghouls dragging Homer out of the freezer and "Don't mind if I do!" are good too.)
The other two segments are much looser/broader riffs (the basic concept of A Sound Of Thunder rather than a beat for beat retelling, and I'm not sure if the other one is riffing on anything) and it pays off. They're so funny and inventive and creepy. I love the shrugging prehistoric creature, and forever replaced "I dunno" with that noise when I first saw this episode.
And then that ending with the gas and the musical number and Santa's Little Helper is a genuinely unsettling mix of tones, pulled off expertly. I even like the Outer Limits intro (it's just a shame that they put the Marge curtain bit in, would have been great if they'd just started with that old movie for like ten seconds, a very mild Orson Wellesing of the audience).
S06E07 - Bart's Girlfriend
I don't have much to say on this one. Not quite as good as I remember it, I can't put my finger on why. There are a couple of over-explained jokes (e.g. the troll hair) and the story is pretty thin. I guess really I just don't find the joke level as high as some episodes. It's fine, it's a solid episode. It has the classic "new glasses" dialogue, at least.
S06E08 - Lisa On Ice
Last week's wasn't as good as I remembered, this one is better than I remembered! This was hitting proper season 3 vibes for me - a strong story with some actual character notes in it, lots of great jokes and clever writing, and a sweet ending. We even get a bespoke version of the credits music, which is always fun. It does have some of the season 6 wackiness mixed in, which works well when it doesn't overpower the whole thing, and it has an incredibly jerky Homer but that fits with the story. In fact, it kind of unlocked jerkass Homer for me in that I realised he's more like a new single-episode character in each story, now. Here he's like a 'super-competitive dad' character that they know we'll never see again so they can go way over the top with him. Next week he'll be someone else. Taken on those terms, Jerkass Homer is perhaps more palatable - he's not a degraded original Homer, he's fulfilling an entirely different function now.
S06E09 - Homer Badman
[no notes - quite good?]
S06E10 - Grandpa vs. Sexual Inadequacy
I enjoyed this one but it feels fairly disjointed. The kids subplot especially is pretty shallow and aimless, and the tonic conceit feels like a rather arbitrary way to get Homer and Abe stuck on a road trip. I was most interested in Homer's turn to whole-assed over-parenting and cutting between that and Abe starting to regret being such a piece of shit dad himself. (The sex stuff up top was okay, but a little of that goes a long way and risks turning into something like the future 'Marge and Homer develop a sex in public fetish' episode, so I'm glad they didn't do more of that.)
I guess this is a case of when the season 3 vibes and the season 6 vibes don't mesh so well.
S06E11 - Fear Of Flying
S06E12 - Homer The Great
I'm not a fan of Homer The Great. The tone is wholly removed from reality, the premise and story are paper-thin, the guest star is wasted, and this is the start of musical numbers feeling arbitrarily crammed in. I think it's around here that the episode quality ratio really starts slipping (I was also not a fan of Fear Of Flying).
S06E13 - And Maggie Makes Three
Loved this episode! Again, this is really hitting my ideal late-golden-age sweet spot of strong S3 storytelling with fanciful S6 sprinkled over it. I love the florid language, the flashback humour, the perfectly pitched Homer stupidity. And that Do It For Her ending is a lot less cloying than I'd remembered, probably due to it getting memed and referenced to death at a level only matched by that Futurama dog episode - the plaque really is a dark touch (especially now I'm watching it with a few depressing jobs under my belt) and the DIFH reveal is dropped right at the end, held for a few seconds and then they're out. Classy.
Can't help but wonder if doing a 'flashback to birth of child' episode galvanised them into writing a smarter, tighter episode than some we've been seeing. There's a great joke like every five seconds here, it's incredible. I also really appreciate that they're brave enough to make Homer's life feel so idyllic that you're bummed out along with him when Marge gets pregnant, in the same way you might be in episodes where the writers dangle a million dollars in front of the Simpsons then rip it away again, before pulling a sharp turn into a happy ending with Maggie's arrival.
S06E14 - Bart's Comet
I'm a big fan of this one. It leans unusually heavily on the drama, and what comedy is there is often pretty understated (though still very funny), but I think it works really well. It's an interesting story with a very satisfying structure. Probably my only nitpick would be Homer flipping from trying to kick Ned out of his own bomb shelter to leaving it to join him - I would have liked there to be some tiny impetus for this de-Grinching, Ned telling Homer he can keep his lawnmower once he's gone or whatever.
Snowball II and SLH watching telly - if reports of Groening's intense dislike for anthropomorphism in this show are accurate, he must have haaated this bit!
S06E14 - Homie The Clown
Absolutely love this one, stone-cold classic, one of my all-time favourites. Not an ounce of fat on it, every gag a classic, a steadily escalating story that ends in a magnificently choreographed climax and then there's even time for a little rug-pull button at the end. I also enjoy the meta satisfaction of them finally making use of the early abandoned 'Homer is secretly Krusty' storyline.
S6E16 - Bart vs. Australia
Pretty bad, this one. Very slow and barely any funny jokes. Just really clunky overall, feels like an autopilot episode.
S06E17 - Homer Vs. Patty And Selma
It's a solid A-plot but with no big laughs, and the B-story is disconnected and fizzles out a bit. Best bit is Homer's dog voice.
S06E18 - A Star Is Burns
My opinion of this episode was a lot lower this time around than I remember it being previously. There are some classic bits sprinkled through it (Boo-urns, Four Funerals & A Wedding), but surrounded by so much unsophisticated undercooked humour. I was initially going to say that it's the worst of S6's impulses, but instead I'm not surprised at all to hear that it was written at least in part by a different staff. It really feels like they just ad-libbed for half an hour with someone transcribing and then called it a day. "And then Homer says I bet Jay can't sing the hot dog song and then Jay walks past and he can sing the hot dog song and then Bart and Lisa join in and march behind him and then he sings badly and that makes the dog howl and then Homer and and Marge look surprised and then in the next scene..."
The Eye On Springfield titles sum it up, really - what was once a nicely observed parody of magazine shows now has a bunch of ill-fitting infantile bits crammed in like the concrete dousing and the Krusty Burger exposé. For an episode that espouses the value of well-made intelligent art, it sure does sink to the 'football in groin' level an awful lot.
S06E19 - Lisa's Wedding
I don't have a ton to say about this one. I didn't find it particularly funny, and I didn't care about made-up-future-story no matter how much the score wanted me to.
S06E20 - Two-Dozen-And-One Greyhounds
I really like this one. Agreed that there are some shortcuts in an already pretty lightweight story, but when the hit rate of the jokes is this high I don't mind so much. And yeah, that song is great and also feels justified. Incredibly dark ending, too.
S06E21 - The PTA Disbands
A really fun episode! It's not particularly deep (though will any episodes be going forward?) but there's just enough meat on the bones of the story to allow for a parade of great jokes without ever feeling disjointed or arbitrary. I love that they run the Leopold joke again and it works just as well. And I don't normally just type out quotes from the episode, but I have to say: "The finger thing means the taxes!"
S06E22 - 'Round Springfield
Again, not surprised that this was done with a different staff because oof, this is a rough one. It feels like they just grabbed a load of index cards from the 'leftover ideas' board and cobbled them together. Nothing really funny or interesting here, barely a story, and a weird amount of cloyingly sincere moments with some twee jokes thrown on top in what comes across as a faintly embarrassed cover-up attempt.
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